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A forward-looking CMDB does more than keep an organization's IT operations running. It draws clear connections between IT components and business services, which is the core of Business Service Management (BSM). But even more critical than the CMDB's ability to support business as it is now, is the question of how well it will drive business innovation in the future.

Businesses expect IT management to demonstrate their contributions to end-user benefits and the bottom line while addressing immediate needs and long-term performance management goals. This white paper presents IT2020, a new performance management paradigm for meeting both of these expectations.

As organizations have improved service delivery, they have also turned their focus to presenting business value more positively. These organizations are beginning to develop true BSM systems in two ways: by understanding the metrics that successful businesses employ to determine the value of IT, and by linking these metrics and associated business services to IT infrastructure components.

Over the past ten years, IT personnel costs have risen faster than hardware and software investments. IT services have not improved process-wise and still require as much manpower, if not more, to operate now as they did in the past. As firms spend 76% of their IT budget on maintenance and support, they will naturally invest in BSM solutions that will reduce costs, enable ITIL, and provide an optimal ROI.

Limited visibility has tethered CIOs' success in both IT and business. However, using federated CMDB technology, CIOs can view the complete IT infrastructure and the entire lifecycle of a business service.

In order to provide high quality, cost effective business services in complex, distributed environments, improved IT management strategies are required. Business Service Management (BSM) is a strategic approach to managing IT services in support of improved business performance.

Enterprise content is growing at an average rate of 200% per year-and the risks of noncompliance are growing even faster. This paper examines the business and technical difficulties of managing content from disparate systems and presents the most viable alternatives for addressing these challenges.

Organizations are drowning in content. They don't know what they have, and they can't find what they need when they need it. While they spend significant time and money to manage content stored among a host of disconnected systems, their efforts are less than fully effective.

Managing service delivery in todayís complex and dynamic business environments demands new and different approaches from IT. The explosive growth and the rate of change of information has brought particularly daunting challenges for IT that have contributed to incredibly complex underlying infrastructures. To get a true picture of all of the components necessary to support an IT or Business Service, you must access and bring together data that resides in disparate data silos throughout the enterprise.

Business runs on content and that content must be managed holistically, across the entire business. However, managing content is, in itself, not enough to drive business. Enterprises must incorporate ECM with other IT management systems to provide complete Business Service Management (BSM).

Aligning IT and business perspectives requires the ability to create links between configuration information in the CMDB and the business service as experienced by the user. Service Dependency Mapping (SDM) products automate the process of creating and maintaining these links.

Because business success is tightly fused with technology, IT costs are rising, and this trend is expected to continue. As a result, businesses are demanding that IT be more than a static resource. IT is expected to deliver business results with a measurable contribution to the organization's bottom line.

ITIL provides a framework of customizable best practice initiatives that help organizations consistently deliver high-quality IT services. Effective ITIL implementation adds value to the IT infrastructure and improves business and service delivery.

Composite applications can provide multiple benefits, such as business agility, better utilization of business software assets through code reuse, development efficiencies, and cost optimization. Once companies are skilled at deploying them, many find that they roll out new applications and integrations faster, while maximizing the value of "tried and true" software components.

Application management requires visibility from multiple vantage points within the IT enterprise, combined with a centralized information store that pulls the technology pieces of the application puzzle into a coherent whole.

To meet the challenges of intense competition and increasing customer demands, companies must tightly align their IT service management with business issues and priorities. This paper outlines the maturity steps involved in the progression towards proactive Business Service Management (BSM) and explains how ASG's metaCMDB helps secure its seamless adoption.

Application Portfolio Optimization (APO) provides executives with tools and information to assess the quality and condition of application assets as well as a means for understanding the impact of proposed application changes.

Improved business productivity often requires more efficient IT and more efficient IT cannot be achieved without a better understanding of the way business services are run and delivered. Configuration Management Databases (CMDBs) have emerged as a central component for Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and business service management (BSM).

As IT evolves towards a more business-aligned position, it must seek out new ways of working that support more effective operations, service creation, and service delivery. These include technologies, processes, and a culture that supports higher levels of accountability, as well as more dynamic responsiveness to business needs.

End-user expectations and high levels of performance against Service Level Agreements (SLAs) must be achieved or organizations risk the loss of business. This paper details key capabilities needed for successful end-user monitoring and provides critical considerations for delivering a successful end-user experience.

Targeted at IT executives responsible for both the financial and ultimate project oversight of an enterprise CMDB initiative, this white paper sets expectations for ROI calculations for CMDB initiatives, provides basic ROI best practices, and gives readers sufficient insight to move forward with their CMDB project.

Virtualization is now mainstream. Enterprises continue to heavily invest in virtualization projects and while short term hardware and cost saving benefits are being achieved, few enterprises achieve anywhere close to the full potential of virtualization as they struggle with new problems like assuring performance and availability, preventing VM sprawl, and maximizing resource utilization